Arrow Video: Crumb Catcher (2023) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Film worker Chris Skotchdopole, part time actor, editor and cinematographer on Larry Fessenden’s 2019 film Depraved, has been involved in film (primarily horror) since the early 2000s.  From assistant camerawork and sound design on The ABCs of Death 2 to camera interning on Righteous Kill and eventually the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, Skotchdopole was a jack of all trades.  Eventually the filmmaker got into writing, producing and directing, working on short films throughout the 2010s before finally making his formal feature film directing debut with the 2023 home invasion thriller Crumb Catcher, now being picked up and release in a limited special edition by boutique label Arrow Video.  The resulting film is a surprising little chamber piece that doesn’t quite go as wildly berserk as Eric Pennycoff’s The Leech but it touches on kindred blackmailing/murderous territory and is something of a jack-in-the-box sort of chamber piece.

 
Following a mysterious blackout period during his wedding night, Shane (Rigo Garay) and his newlywed Leah (Ella Rae Peck) venture out to an isolated household for their honeymoon getaway.  However, things turn awkward and uncomfortable upon the arrival of the wedding reception’s scruffy disheveled waiter John (John Speredakos) and bartender Rose (Lorraine Farris).  Transgressing over social niceties including overstaying their welcome, it quickly becomes apparent that Shane under the influence cheated on Leah with the bartender Rose and the uninvited guests are now threatening to blackmail the couple with a humiliating video of the out-of-wedlock duo sexing it up.  As the night bores on, the situation grows ever stranger as the invaders reveal they’re not interested in money so much as they’re seeking out business partners on an invention John has devised called the Crumb Catcher.

 
A basic pressure cooker featuring co-screenwriting by Larry Fessenden and actor Rigo Garay with brilliant 2.00:1 scope cinematography by Save Yourselves! cameraman Adam Carboni, a soft ambient score by four composers and tight editing by writer-director Chris Skotchdopole, Crumb Catcher is a surprising, delightfully weird home invasion flick with a most peculiar curious object at its epicenter.  As tensions escalate and soon bullets fly or stabbings are committed, this darkly comic ensemble piece never quite achieves the levels of shock and awe generated by like-minded ventures with the ferocious pinnacle as of late being the Danish shocker Speak No Evil, but it does serve up some fun comical thrills.  Most of the attention of this minimalist ensemble goes to John Speredakos from Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo.  A character actor who has been around the block including but not limited to a lawyer in William Friedkin’s Rules of Engagement, the actor all but owns this movie with a performance that starts out eccentric before becoming increasingly volatile and manic.  The supporting actors are mostly fine with Rigo Garay making the tattooed husband into an ineffectual nebbish while the wife by Ella Rae Peck grows increasingly frustrated with her husband’s ineptitude before learning a dark secret he’s harboring.

 
A nice little scope widescreen stage play of sorts as cinema, a home invasion thriller with a most bizarre twist and a continuation of the school of low budget horror filmmaking engendered by Larry Fessenden, Crumb Catcher comes to Arrow Video blu-ray disc with plentiful extras.  Including a newly recorded director’s commentary, a near-forty minute making-of documentary, two of director Chris Skotchdopole’s short films, reversible sleeve art and an illustrated booklet featuring a written introduction by Larry Fessenden, Arrow Video have gone all out on this clandestine little pot boiler.  One of the most surprising and effective horror debuts in recent memory and a surefire win for Arrow Video, Crumb Catcher is a deliciously weird little thriller that could only have been borne out of the school of thought that is Larry Fessenden with Skotchdopole as arguably one of the filmmaker’s shiniest new students.

--Andrew Kotwicki